Amusement game devices, such as pinball machines, redemption games, etc. of the commercial, e.g., revenue generating, and non-commercial, e.g., home entertainment, type are well known in the art. By way of example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,338,031, 6,158,737, and U.S. Published Application No. 2007/0026918 illustrate and describe amusement game devices of the type having a cabinet which houses a playfield.
Rollover switches for use on the playfield of such amusement game devices are also known in the art. By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,203 (“the '203 patent”) illustrates and describes a rollover switch having a switch actuator, comprised of a deformable star shaped cover element coupled to a plunger, a support structure for supporting the switch actuator upon the playfield, and a leaf switch which, when activated by the plunger in response to a ball rolling over the star shaped cover element, functions to send a signal to a processing device of the amusement game. The described rollover switch also includes a lamp which can be illuminated to, for example, indicate that the rollover switch is available for scoring, to indicate that the player has completed or achieved actuating or registering of the switch, and/or the like in accordance with the programmed play instructions of the amusement game device.
While rollover switches such as described in the '203 patent generally work for their intended purpose, they do suffer various disadvantages. For example, after the support structure is inserted into the playfield board and glued therein, the entire playfield board must be sanded in order to assure that the support structure is perfectly flush with the playfield board otherwise the ball could skip over the support structure and thereby create an undesirable condition, e.g., the ball can become airborne and miss the cover element preventing activation of the leaf switch, can cause the ball to become hung up on an edge of the support structure (particularly when the rollover switch is placed in a lane with rails or walls on either side), or the like. Because the finishing operations for the playfield, e.g., the application of silkscreened or digitally printed art and the final sprayed protective clear hard coat, usually a self-leveling urethane finish coat, is applied after the support structure is installed and the playfield sanded, it has been seen that the finishing materials, particularly, the clear hard coat, tend to fill, clog, or otherwise impede the movability of one or more components of the actuator switch which thus requires additional finishing operations to be performed to thereby restore the rollover switch to operability. As will be appreciated, the need to perform all of these operations, which are generally too difficult to implement consistently, undesirably adds to the overall cost of manufacture of the amusement game device.